Ben Ward Why Artificial Bait?

Artificial baits have become a permanent piece of kit in many anglers’ armoury and quite rightly so, a good quality artificial from a good artificial bait manufacture namely, Enterprise Tackle will always be found in my tackle bag, simply because it has been so successful for me in my years of Specimen hunting. Many anglers on the bank and via social media ask me why I use artificial baits so much and I will briefly touch on the points in the text below.

Many waters across the country now suffer the problem of ‘crayfish’. It is very difficult, if not impossible to present a bait in such a way I would be confident with. If you are there for the duration of an overnighter crayfish can do all manner of things to potentially ruin the presentation and slowly whittle down your hook baits. Enterprise artificial baits ensure your hook bait will be presentable, appealing and appetising to a whole wealth of species because it has not been tampered with by crayfish. The last thing you want to do is wake up and retrieve your rig to find it has been removed from the hook/hair by crayfish, this cannot happen when you use Enterprise baits.

Furthermore artificial baits are made and designed from a material that can absorb liquids which in turn enables you to flavour and enhance the properties of the artificial baits. With no exaggeration there are hundreds of flavours that you can obtain from shops around the country that will be suitable for flavouring them with. Flavouring artificial baits can really give you an edge and you can tailor them to the species your targeting, from my few years’ experience I have gained a vast amount of knowledge and have found very sweet flavour i.e. Sweetcorn and Betalin have been very productive for tench and bream. Another very popular bream flavour is pineapple in which I am keen to back that statement up.
While angling for specimen sized fish, although us specimen anglers appreciate smaller fish we sometimes opt out of fishing for them, by this I mean we wouldn’t want to be catching 6 – 8oz roach when the tackle is set up for big bream, a favourite bait of mine is maggot and also a favourite food for bream and roach. I tend to not use real maggots while fishing over night because small roach and perch can pick them up, therefore I use artificial maggot from Enterprise and the smaller fish often refrain from picking up the hook bait and as a result it is still presented well and awaiting a big specimen to pick it up. Also smaller fish will suck the live maggot and leave a skin and then the hook baits is in a vulnerable position and the big specimens will not be enticed to pick the hook bait up.

Waters that contain weed have a huge banquet of natural foods which include leeches. When fishing for specimen fish we often find clear areas or at least clearer areas, we then proceed to introduce bait and in my case, maggots, caster and hemp. It will not be long before the leeches migrate along the lake bed and suck on the maggots, if you used real maggots on the hook the leeches, larvae and other underwater bugs could potentially destroy your hook bait and leave it in a position where a fish will not take it.
While fishing at range it can be difficult to keep real sweetcorn, worm and many more real baits on the hook without it either coming off the hook and also the hook point penetrating the bait, both of these will prevent landing fish, you may have bites if the hook baits penetrates the bait but you certainly will not have a decent hook hold and the chances are you will loose the fish. Artificial baits will not come off the hook and the chances of disguising the hook point is much slimmer than a real bait when fishing at distance.

Above, I have briefly touched on the five main reason of why I use artificial baits, I hope you found it somewhat interesting and maybe even learned something from this. Failing that I hope you enjoyed reading and it may give you something to think about and possibly adopt in your own angling.

Enterprise Say - Support Your Local Tackleshop

Whilst we are providing the opportunity for you to purchase our
products from the website, Enterprise Tackle would ask that you
support your local tackle shops and buy our goods from them.
If you are unable to purchase what you need then please do use
our online shop or ask the shop to stock the item!